


Of Pies and Friends

by Morvidra



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Pie, and the struggle of individuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 02:22:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10912371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morvidra/pseuds/Morvidra
Summary: Tango finally figures out why Whiskey doesn't hang out at the Haus much, and sets out to fix the problem. Subtly.





	Of Pies and Friends

**Author's Note:**

> My first Check Please! fic, so let me know what you think!
> 
> Any pie inaccuracies may be put down to the fact that I am Australian, and pies here equal pastry with a meat-and-gravy filling, sometimes served with mushy peas.

Bitty had made a pie, so basically it was a normal day in the Haus. And Tango was really pleased to be there eating it with the guys who lived in the Haus – and did that make them _Hausmates_? Anyway, he was happy because he liked them. And also he liked pie, and especially Bitty’s pie, because Bitty’s pie was the best Tango had ever had apart from his mam’s pie, and he thought it might even be better sometimes.

Not that he would ever tell his mam that.

“All right, now y’all are to get _plates_ and _forks_ , you hear me?” Bitty ordered. “Set a good example for the tadpoles – I won’t have you desecrating this pie like you did that first pie.”

“Bitty.” Holster puts his hand on his heart. “I swear on my love of _30 Rock_ that we would never do such a thing again. But bro, really. That pie was like encountering heaven.”

“Yeah, you can’t blame us,” Ransom agrees, grabbing plates out of the cupboard. “We were overwhelmed by its glory.”

“Bro,” Holster agrees.

Tango really, really wants to know what happened to that first pie. Only he’s asked a lot of times before and no-one will tell him, so he figures he’ll have wait a bit before he asks again.

“Now, is that enough forks?” Bitty counts rapidly. “Holster, Ransom, Chowder, Lardo, Ford, Tango, and me. Seems fine. Oh! Oh, my lord!” He grabs for another fork like it might run away. “Whiskey! Oh sweet honey child, I am so, _so_ , sorry – I _swear_ I did not forget you.”

“That’s ok,” Whiskey says, and he’s apparently been there in the corner of the room all along, which makes Tango feel kind of bad because he hadn’t noticed him. “I didn’t really stop by for pie.”

“Well, that’s just your good luck that there’s one ready, now isn’t it,” Bitty says brightly. “Tango, darlin’, here’s a piece for you and one for Whiskey. Now you boys feel free to come out to the living room, although you are _not_ sitting on that green couch unless I put a rug down first. Pie’s ready!” he calls out, and the kitchen is filled with bodies within about three seconds by Tango’s count, which is pretty impressive.

But still, he notices Whiskey kind of sidling out the door holding his pie, and maybe something’s wrong, because he looks kind of polite. And OK, Tango isn’t the most observant guy, but what if something is wrong? Because as a fellow d-man surely Tango should go at least check on Whiskey?

When he gets outside Whiskey is sitting on the Haus porch. He looks OK, but he’s kind of picking at his pie, which seems really weird to Tango, because it smells so good he’s barely restraining himself from shoving his whole piece in his mouth using his hands. He doesn’t, because Bitty made them promise to use forks to eat pie, but it’s a near thing.

“Hey,” he says to Whiskey, sitting down next to him.

“Hey.”

“So, like… how are things with you?” Tango asks. He’s really trying to do the whole Tact and Subtlety thing, even though it doesn’t make much sense to him, because if you want to know something, why not ask that question instead of a sideways one?

“Not bad.” Whiskey looks at Tango. “You?”

“’Swawesome,” Tango says through a mouthful of pie. “I get to hang out with you guys and eat pie!” He shovels another bite in.

Whiskey kind of hums acknowledgment, and pushes his pie around on his plate a bit. And Tango realises that he’s nearly finished his own piece, but Whiskey’s only taken maybe one bite of his, although it’s hard to see with all the mess he’s making of it.

“Don’t you like the pie?” he asks Whiskey.

“It’s fine,” Whiskey says. “It’s nicely made. Bitty’s a good cook.”

And OK, now Tango knows something is wrong, because Whiskey never normally uses that many words if he doesn’t have to. But he doesn’t know how to find out, especially if he keeps being Tactful.

Whiskey takes the smallest possible piece on his fork, and yeah, Tango decides to forget about Subtlety just now.

“I really don’t know the right question to ask here,” he blurts out instead. “But, um, I think something’s wrong? And if I can help I totally will, but, like, I have no idea how right now.” He kind of runs down here, because he really has no idea what’s going on.

There’s a kind of half-smile on Whiskey’s face now. “Thanks,” he says to Tango. “Nothing big though.”

Tango is pretty sure that in Whiskey-speak this translates to “I’m not dying or having a crisis or failing my classes or in a bad situation”, which is pretty much a relief to hear. But it really doesn’t help him with the problem of what _is_ the matter.

He’d kind of avoided answering the pie question though, now Tango came to think about it.

So maybe…

“ _Is_ it about the pie?” Tango asks. He doesn’t really see how there could be a pie-related problem, but maybe there is.

Whiskey shrugs. “Kind of. I just don’t actually like sweet food.”

And _oh_.

That makes sense. Well, actually the whole idea of not liking sweet stuff doesn’t make sense to Tango at _all_ , because that would mean not liking maple syrup on his pancakes, but in context – like in a _Whiskey_ context – the pieces are, like, _totally_ falling into place.

Because Whiskey _doesn’t_ have syrup on his pancakes, and Tango’s pretty sure he drinks black coffee (like, _seriously_ black), and really does Tango need any evidence other than the fact that Whiskey’s been holding a piece of Bitty’s pie for five minutes and _hasn’t eaten it_?

“Oh! OK,” he says to Whiskey, because he has to say something here, right? Because otherwise there’s going to be an awkward silence, which would be… awkward. “So, like, can you not eat sugar? Or do you just not like it?”

“I could eat it if I wanted,” Whiskey tells him. “I just don’t. It’s, um – I’m just really sensitive to the taste of sweet things, I guess.”

Tango’s chewing on his lip by now, because OK, on the one hand it’s _good_ that Whiskey isn’t, like, _allergic_ to sugar or something. But on the other hand… well, Tango is thinking over all the times in the Haus that Bitty has baked a pie and Whiskey has politely eaten a slice and all the time he’d been _not really wanting to_. And Tango hadn’t known this really important fact about his fellow d-man, which was probably a massive failure of the d-man rules as laid down by Ransom and Holster. And also it was kind of a huge dick-move to assume that everyone liked the same things, even when you were talking about food, but it had honestly never occurred to Tango to ask, even though he’s known Whiskey for nearly a whole year. Tango feels really, really bad about that. 

“Don’t tell Bitty,” Whiskey adds. 

And Tango has, like, so many questions starting with _why not_ , but then he figures it out. Whiskey’s a nice guy – Tango is _completely_ sure about that, even if he is pretty quiet – and he doesn’t want to hurt Bitty’s feelings or make him feel bad.

So OK, Tango has the best and kindest d-partner in the freaking _world_ , and Tango is, like, in _awe_ of his amazing willingness to pretend he likes pie just to make Bitty happy. But on the other hand, that could mean Whiskey spending the rest of the year eating stuff he didn’t want to, and how much of a bad friend would Tango be to let that happen, now that he knew there was a problem?

On the other hand, Tango doesn’t want to upset Bitty either.

So…

“Can I eat your pie?” he asks instead.

Whiskey hands him the fork. Tango does some hard thinking while he’s eating, and by the time he’s finished, he has a Plan.

He just has to be Subtle about it.

***

“Bitty. _Bitty_.” Holster falls to his knees in front of Bitty. “That pie… _bro_.”

“A-fucking-mazing,” Ransom adds, swooning.

“I mean, your pies are always an otherworldly experience,” Holster says. “But that one was _so_ good, words do not exist to describe it.”

“Dark chocolate chilli pie.” Ransom shakes his head. “I should never have doubted you, bro.”

“Well, thank you, boys,” Bitty says, blushing a little. “Although it was Ford who found me the recipe, so y’all should be thanking her as well!”

Ransom and Holster looked at each other.

“She is gonna be _such_ a great manager next year,” Ransom says.

“Bro,” agrees Holster.

***

“Pie went down well, I hear,” Ford says the next time Tango sees her.

“It was great,” Tango enthuses. “I mean, _Whiskey_ liked it, which was totally the point, so it wouldn’t matter if no-one else liked it as well, but like, I actually really liked it too?”

“So it wasn’t sweet?”

“No! It was really chocolate-y though.” Tango sighs happily. Just _thinking_ about the memory of that pie…

“Right, so stage one can be counted a success then,” Ford says, making a note on her phone. “Now, Lardo’s ready with the next recipe – although let’s give it a few days first, so the pacing feels more natural. But more importantly,” she fixes Tango with a gimlet stare, “did you save me a piece of that pie?”

Tango has a piece in Tupperware in his backpack. He’s not a _total_ idiot.

***

Lardo’s recipe is a sour cherry pie – “like _sour_ , Bits, you need to feel your tooth enamel lifting when you bite into it”.

Tango can’t even eat it. Neither can Ransom, although Holster, weirdly, seems to like it. Whiskey has a second piece and compliments Bitty on the delicious flavour. And OK, Tango’s starting to think Whiskey’s tastebuds just plain don’t register sour tastes as some sort of compensation for over-reacting to sweet ones, because that pie would have made pure lemon juice taste sweet by comparison.

Although Chowder likes it too, so maybe it’s just that _Tango_ doesn’t like sour tastes. Which… he already knew, actually.

Anyway, Whiskey is happy and Bitty is happy, so Tango feels like his plan is going pretty well. And neither of them seem to suspect that there even _is_ a plan, so he must have got the Subtle part right, too.

So now it was maybe time for the hard part.

***

“Um, hello? It’s Tony – Tango – from Samwell? I’m on the hockey team, and, uh, Lardo gave me your number?”

“Oh, right,” says the voice in his ear, and Tango has to stop himself from freaking out because he was talking to Jack! Freaking! Zimmermann! He had Jack Zimmermann’s number in his phone! “Uh, yeah, Lards said you might call. She said you had something you really needed to ask me?”

“Yeah, I, uh, just thought – I mean,” Tango stammers. He makes a stern effort to pull himself together. He’s making a fool of himself in front of _Jack Zimmermann_ , which is totally not the idea. “I have this teammate, right? Whiskey – you signed his jersey, that time you came to the locker room after our game? So anyway…”

He tells Jack the whole story. He’s pretty sure he rambles a bit in the middle, but he gets the whole story out eventually, including details of the plan so far. Jack actually seems to know about the chocolate-chilli and sour-cherry pies already – Tango guesses he must have been talking to one of the guys.

“So I was thinking,” Tango says as he finally gets to the point of this call, “that maybe you could help. I mean, you’re an NHL player! So you must be, like, an _expert_ on nutrition, right? And I’m pretty sure sweet things aren’t supposed to be a part of an athlete’s diet very often – I mean I could be wrong, but I think it’s not? So I thought maybe you could get Bitty to make not so many sweet pies, like maybe more savory ones? And you could tell him it would help the team be healthier and play better. Which I’m sure it would! And if it was you saying it he’d have to believe you, because you’re an NHL star and I’m just a tadpole,” Tango finishes, winding down in a rush.

“…so you know that would mean you and the rest of the team wouldn’t get as many pies?” Jack asks eventually, after a bit of a pause. And yeah, Tango has faced that reality. Life without Bitty baking pies all the time… well, it doesn’t seem quite right, because even after less than a year, Tango has got pretty used to a steady supply of baked goods. But…

“I know,” he tells Jack. “But if it meant Whiskey was happier it would totally be worth it.”

He hears Jack make a little sound over the phone – Tango can’t tell if Jack is surprised or happy, but it was definitely some sort of emotion, which from a guy commonly known as the hockey robot is pretty unexpected. But then Jack says, “Whiskey’s really lucky to have you as a friend, Tango.” 

Which. Just. Tango is not sure he can cope with feeling this happy and proud.

“I’ll talk to Bittle.” Jack pauses like there’s something else he wants to say. “Keep up the good work, eh?”

And Tango is just going to go and have a quiet heart-attack after he ends this call.

***

Tango isn’t really sure what Jack says to Bitty in the end, but he definitely says _something_. Bitty doesn’t actually make _fewer_ pies, but he starts making more of a range of different tastes. And there’s pretty much always one that’s less sweet – involving dark chocolate, lemon, sour cherry, rhubarb, or on one weird but notable occasion, vinegar.

Whiskey turns up to the Haus a lot more often now. Ransom and Holster are happy, because that means Whiskey’s hanging out with the lax bros less, and Bitty’s happy because Whiskey’s being less ‘standoffish’. Lardo and Ford are happy too, mainly because Tango isn’t pestering them to help him with his plan.

So Tango’s pretty pleased with how things turned out, really. And he’s, like, completely sure he managed to be Tactful and Subtle about it all, too.

He’s still not sure why Bitty baked him a whole pie all for himself the other day, in his favourite flavour, with “Best Bro” written in the lattice. But he guesses Bitty can sometimes be Subtle too.

**Author's Note:**

> The vinegar pie is real, or at least it was in the 19th century. Apple cider vinegar was used to give an apple flavour when fresh or dried apples weren't available. I have no idea how it tasted, but Jack 'History Major' Zimmermann probably found the recipe for Bitty.


End file.
